Talk:Mechanical Turk: Difference between revisions

	Mechanical Turk is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia’s Main Page as Today’s featured article on April 6, 2007, and on November 30, 2025.

This film may be added to poular culture section.

I saw this movie on TV when I was a boy and it made a great impression on me. I finally managed to track it down online. The presentation I saw was dubbed into the Afrikaans language by South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and shown under the title “Die Skaak Masjien” (The chess machine). My childhood memory of the film is vague, except that I remember it as scary. The end of the film made a lasting impression on me. The chess machine was taken out to a place in the Mexican desert on horseback and tied to a cactus as a kind of death sentence. The policemen who tied it up and rode off was unaware of the dwarf chess player inside the cabinet. The final scene shows the dwarf’s leg dangling from the box.

The only written information I could find is on the bdff web page, first link below. There are a few good stills and release articles that may be of interest on the same web page. The film is not available for purchase or rental online, so this page contains the only description of the plot, which is a fictional drama, containing the the characters Mälzel and Schlumberger, and of course the Turk, but with no baring on the actual biographical history of any of the characters.

The director, Juan Luis Buñuel, was the son of the famous Luis Buñuel, Spanish film director, linked to Surrealist era.

Title: Histoires extraordinaires (series) : Le Joueur d’échecs de Maelzel (episode 1)
Director: Juan Luis Buñuel
Details (from IMDB)
Release date: February 7, 1981 (France)
Countries of origin: France, Mexico
Languages: French, Spanish
Filming locations: Toluca, Estado de México, Mexico
Production company: France 3
Runtime: 50 minutes

links:

http://php88.free.fr/bdff/image_film.php?ID=15189

https://m.cinemagia.ro/filme/histoires-extraordinaires-le-joueur-dechecs-de-maelzel-167600

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0341422/?ref_=ttep_ep1 Blewbubbles (talk) 01:21, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That looks interesting, Blewbubbles. Unfortunately the second and third of those three sources are worthless, but the first seems good enough. (The Wikipedia page fr:Histoires extraordinaires (série télévisée) is unusable too.) But one decent source is all we need. Feel free to add a mention of it to the article. — Hoary (talk) 01:08, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve added it. — Hoary (talk) 04:19, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article seems to use the terms “match” and “game” interchangeably. A match is a series of games, and it is not clear whether any of the “matches” listed in the history were more than one game. If so,there would be a score for the match. Wastrel Way (talk)Eric Wastrel Way (talk) 15:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, Wastrel Way. If you could check that each “match” wasn’t a mere game, and perhaps also that each “game” wasn’t an entire match, and keep a log of your findings here, perhaps concluding that this or that instance of “match” (or “game”) is unknowable without access to the source, that would be most helpful. Then other editors could be enlisted for their help with the troublesome examples. — Hoary (talk) 00:53, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Currently the ‘main’ image, and the one that shows up in linked thumbnails, is one where the description says that “[the author] was wrong both about the position of the operator and the dimensions of the automaton”. Meanwhile, another image in the article has the caption: “A copper engraving of the Turk, showing the open cabinets and working parts. A ruler at bottom right provides scale. Kempelen was a skilled engraver and may have produced this image himself.”

Wouldn’t it make sense to have the image that is more accurate and mabye even made by the original designer as the article’s main image? 2001:1C04:3E0A:DD00:F52D:7C11:651C:7C5E (talk) 14:42, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I learned about this from Sarah Z’s video on cheating at chess.

• Revealing the secrets section is very choppy and includes mentions of dubious relevance. First paragraph also makes an unsourced claim of inaccuracy.
• Lots of unsourced content in the “popular culture” section, including multiple one-sentence paragraphs.
• The “dimensions” part in “Notes” feels like original research. I also don’t feel the giant quote in note C is necessary.
• Many sources are missing page numbers.
• “Online” link not necessary in Footnote 47.
• Footnote 47 (Deep Blue…) is a mess and needs to be re-attributed.
• Footnote 77 (Chess Base) is incomplete.

My biggest concern is that the “Popular Culture” section is bloated with trivia and primary sources.

Pinging @Hoary:, @Ihardlythinkso:. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 00:28, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why me? I wondered. The talk page archive revealed that I’d spent my time on this article — but back before many WP editors were born. I’d quite forgotten. ¶ I’ve edited the pop-culture-etc section, slightly. After doing so, I noticed that TenPoundHammer had been there before me. So I deleted some of what TPH had decided to retain. Did I perhaps go too far? Feel free to revert some (all?) of my edits. — Hoary (talk) 02:02, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I pinged you because the page edit stats said you were the most prominent editor of this article who was still active. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:09, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Me, prominent? I’d hoped to slither through life unnoticed. (And Sarah Z is a new name to me. I’d been under the impression that this week’s videos tended toward cheating at golf.) Well, I’ve done a small but not insignificant percentage of the needed work. Which of the tasks are you planning to tackle, TenPoundHammer? NB There are some that you don’t mention. Take page numbers: you want them specified. A very reasonable request, but the current specifications follow any of at least three patterns, exemplified by (A) Levitt, 30–31. (B) Daniel Willard Fiske (1859). The Book of the first American Chess Congress: Containing the Proceedings of that celebrated Assemblage, held in New York, in the Year 1857. Rudd & Carleton. p. 456. and (C) the combination of Daniel Willard Fiske (1859). The Book of the first American Chess Congress: Containing the Proceedings of that celebrated Assemblage, held in New York, in the Year 1857. Rudd & Carleton. and ⁴²⁶. The lack of a single format is poor. What to do (and who’s going to do it)? — Hoary (talk) 07:23, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Hoary: This isn’t my area of expertise, so I don’t know if I’d be any help beyond open ended recommendations of “this should be improved”. As I said, I learned about the subject through a YouTube video and decided to look it up, and thought some parts of the article needed touching up. It’s generally recommended to give such a notification if you feel a Featured Article needs work. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:24, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer, virtually all the credit for this article should go to Bdj (last seen in 2007). I’ve never read a single book chapter about the Turk; and as far as I remember I’ve never read anything about chess (other than The Defense), automata, west European (“orientalist”?) images of Turks, popular attractions, etc. Except, that is, for this article. But of course neither you nor I need subject expertise in order (A1) to point out that a lot of book references lack the page references that they should have (thank you for that), (A2) to point out that those that do have page references aren’t consistent in the method they choose, (A3) to decide among the acceptable methods of citing books, (B1) to convert references from one style to another, or (B2) to find page numbers. It’s just that the “(B)” tasks require a lot more time and energy than the “(A)” tasks; and that the “(B)” tasks are a lot more palatable for editors who find the subject at least moderately interesting. I do find the subject interesting, so I’ll try to do some work on this. — Hoary (talk) 00:10, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer, your comments above (and reproduced below) probably refer to this version of 2 August. I’ll look at the comments in that context, and in the context of what’s now the current version.

• Revealing the secrets section is very choppy and includes mentions of dubious relevance. It’s now titled “Publication of the mechanism” [Hmm, is this really an improvement?] and I hope is a little less choppy. I suppose that the idea was and is to provide a narrative of the gradual increase of understanding (among interested readers) of how the Turk really worked. An obvious oddity within is the poppycock by Robert-Houdin. This may not belong in this section, but it surely belongs somewhere in the article, as Robert-Houdin was a popular and respected writer and his own editor chides him for his wrongheadedness in the book’s preface and (my guess), it had an influence, direct or indirect, on Bernard’s celebrated film. First paragraph also makes an unsourced claim of inaccuracy. Now replaced with something radically different.

Rather than (my) “Publication of the mechanism”, maybe something like “Uncovering of the fraud (or illusion)”, which is still a bit pulpy. Ceoil (talk) 21:16, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Lots of unsourced content in the “popular culture” section, including multiple one-sentence paragraphs. (And below: My biggest concern is that the “Popular Culture” section is bloated with trivia and primary sources.) Some “Legacy and popular culture” items have been removed. I’ve added some. Of those that remain, Bell’s patenting of the telephone is definitely nontrivial, but its relation to the Turk seems tenuous at best and for this reason I’d be happy to see it go. If no RS can show how MacIntyre’s “The Clockwork Horror” is indebted to the Turk then that too should go. If some other editor removed mention of Carr’s The Crooked Hinge, I wouldn’t object.
• The “dimensions” part in “Notes” feels like original research. This is about note a. If the source, however regrettably, expresses dimensions to the nearest half-foot, and if one is expected to relay these dimensions in the metric system as well, then how should one do this? The note seemed OK to me (aside from its largest dimension). But the matter of imprecise dimensions is now explained more briefly: see note a. I also don’t feel the giant quote in note C is necessary. This survives, still as note c, but now much shortened.
• Many sources are missing page numbers. Yes, that was true, inexcusably. It is no longer true. Of course a minority of references to books really need no page numbers; those that do need them and still lack them include “Hamilton 2013” and “Joshi 1990” (currently references 32 and 106). None of us has access to a copy of either book; thus no page number.
• “Online” link not necessary in Footnote 47. What was reference 47 (coming at the end of note c) is now reference 52 and has been completely (and more informatively) reworked.
• Footnote 47 (Deep Blue…) is a mess and needs to be re-attributed. I take “47” as a typo for “74”, which read “Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, directed by Vikram Jayanti, 2003.” This came immediately after “the 2003 documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine“, and thus was redundant. The current article doesn’t mention Game Over and therefore of course has no such reference.
• Footnote 77 (Chess Base) is incomplete. It’s now reference 97 and is complete.

Comments welcome. — Hoary (talk) 05:20, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other than one drive-by use of {{dubious}} (seriously, what’s the point of the “discuss” section there when literally no one uses it?) and some [citation needed]s, I think all my issues have been addressed. My last concern is the passage beginning In Raymond Bernard’s silent feature film The Chess Player — do the sources support that this was inspired by the Turk or was just similar to it? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 15:40, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer, on the labeling as “dubious”: Did you see “Four-decade-long silence (or not)“, within this talk page? ¶ I’m afraid that the matter of influence on Bernard’s film will have to wait several hours: I have a train to catch. — Hoary (talk) 20:30, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is literally the first time I’ve ever seen someone actually follow through on a [dubious] tag. My apologies for missing it. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:34, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer: My last concern is the passage beginning “In Raymond Bernard’s silent feature film The Chess Player” — do the sources support that this was inspired by the Turk or was just similar to it? The sources support the claim that it was inspired by Kempelen’s Turk — although it would have Kempelen rolling in his grave. The article now explains that Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin perpetrated an extraordinarily fanciful fiction about Kempelen and his first operator. Amazingly, this was taken seriously, presented as fact in the 11th and 14th editions of Britannica (and, I’d guess, the editions in between). Robert-Houdin’s fictionalized tale of the Turk is also to blame for — ahem, also influenced novels and so on. One of these novels was by Henry Dupuy-Mazuel. Its author adapted this for the film directed by Bernard. See for example Maureen Furniss‘s review (doi:10.1353/mov.2004.0007) of the film, a review that’s available via Project Muse (which comes via TWL). — Hoary (talk) 02:43, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Me, above: If no RS can show how MacIntyre’s “The Clockwork Horror” is indebted to the Turk then that too should go. Nobody has yet done so, and therefore I’m about to remove mention of this short story. — Hoary (talk) 09:25, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On 7 September, TenPoundHammer wrote: I still think there are numerous one- and two-sentence paragraphs, [citation needed]s, and other prose issues. There are now no “Citation needed”s. — Hoary (talk) 04:25, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As for the grumble about “numerous one- and two-sentence paragraphs”, I didn’t count the latter, and sleepiness may have prompted mistakes in counting the former, but accurately or otherwise I counted just three:

• In the lead: Constructed by Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, the Turk not only played well in games of chess but also could perform the knight’s tour, a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to visit every square of a chessboard exactly once.
• In “Construction”: A performance in 1769 by the French illusionist François Pelletier at the court of Maria Theresa of Austria in Schönbrunn Palace prompted Wolfgang von Kempelen to promise to return to the Palace within a year with an invention that would surpass Pelletier’s illusions.
• In “Later years”: Mitchell formed a club to restore the Turk for public appearances, completing the work in 1840.

Too many?

Anyway, is there something wrong with one-sentence paragraphs? To me, they seem innocuous and, if expressed and used intelligently, even refreshing. (What I find tiresome is a sequence of one-sentence paragraphs.) — Hoary (talk) 11:30, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As TenPoundHammer points out in “Featured Article issues“, a number of references to books etc are lacking the page references that they should have. With the hope that at least one of these sources will be at the Internet Archive, I thought I’d try looking. (And I’d hope that other editors would join me.) But how to add the page numbers? The article currently uses three systems, among which it makes far the most use of the one exemplified by

• Levitt, 71–83.
• Levitt, 83–86.
• Levitt, 87–91.

(currently “citations” 56–58), which for an explanation require that the reader should search for and find either

• Gerald M. Levitt, The Turk, Chess Automaton (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000), 40.

(currently “citation” 14) above or

• Levitt, Gerald M. (2000). The Turk, chess automaton. McFarland & Co Inc Pub. ISBN 0-7864-0778-6.

(in the “References”) below.

This, I submit, is rather a crappy way of providing information. I don’t want to make yet more use of it.

This article has changed little since 2007. Back then Template:Harvard citation was in its infancy and Template:Sfn didn’t exist. I recommend switching to one or other within this family of Author–date citation templates, which would, for example, change what’s now “Levitt, 83–86” to “Levitt (2000), 83–86” (or similar, depending on the flavor of Harv*/Sfn* used) and link this to

• Levitt, Gerald M. (2000). The Turk, Chess Automaton. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0778-6..

in the bibliography. I’d even be willing to do the work myself. But I want the go-ahead for it first. Comments? — Hoary (talk) 00:47, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose, Ceoil, that we’re condemned to use “title case”, counting letters in prepositions and all. How silly. Do you see any loophole? — Hoary (talk) 07:37, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I grew up in 1970s Ireland and was educated by pro-IRA Christian Brothers so no idea what a “prepositions” is; sounds like one of those English terms. P.S., digging around for free copies of the two main sources. Ceoil (talk) 07:49, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency seems to be the best option. Either we use or don’t. Ceoil (talk) 07:51, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t remember anyone objecting when I’ve used “title case” for book, journal, magazine, newspaper and journal titles; and “sentence case” for article titles. But I’m in no rush to change case in either direction. “Prepositions” (as referred to in WP’s MOS) are among actual prepositions; it’s pretty obvious from their names that “coordinating conjunctions” and “subordinating conjunctions” (as referred to there) are two kinds of “conjunction” — but in reality there’s no such thing. Virtually all “subordinating conjunctions” are actual prepositions. Virtually all English dictionaries agree with each other on these matters, disagree with me, and are wrongheaded. Simple English Wiktionary (alone?) gets it right. — Hoary (talk) 09:07, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“American” spelling, or “British” spelling? (Aside from quotations, etc, of course.) I’ve noticed the occasional example specific to each.

I can never get much worked up about the (non-) matter; though to reduce the risk that others will do so, I generally plump for “Oxford” (i.e. OED) spelling where possible. — Hoary (talk) 23:26, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed as “Oxford”. — Hoary (talk) 21:04, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First metric, then US in parentheses; not MDY but DMY: OK? (I mean, other than when quoting, of course.) — Hoary (talk) 07:06, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No comment from anyone; and therefore yes: (i) first metric, then US. (But there’s an exception for the dimensions of the cabinet, which we only know to the closest half-foot, and metric-first specification of which would be very awkward if we wanted to avoid misrepresenting the source.) And (ii) DMY. — Hoary (talk) 04:17, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From this edit of 20 Dec 2006, the article has had “a lawyer named Mr. Bernard who was a second rank in chess ability” (sourced to Standage). This sounds very odd to me, but it survived the FAC inquisition. “… who was of second rank …” would be idiomatic; but I hesitate to make such an “improvement” as for all I know (i) this is what Standage writes, and (ii) he or the WP editor might be using established chess lingo. — Hoary (talk) 07:09, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’d somehow assumed that players were ranked into classes, and Bernard was in the uppermost but one. But I’m starting to wonder if he was simply ranked second (that, in the context of France, or of the Paris area, only one player was generally regarded as superior). — Hoary (talk) 11:47, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to “ranked second”. I hope that this is close to what Standage writes. — Hoary (talk) 01:57, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve now checked it against Standage and rewritten accordingly. — Hoary (talk) 04:09, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From this edit of 10 Apr 2004, the article had both

• Karl Friedrich Hindenburg. Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen. Nebst einer Abbildung und Beschreibung seiner Sprechmaschine. Leipzig, 1784.
• Joseph Friedrich Freyherr zu Racknitz. Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen und dessen Nachbildung. Mit sieben Kupfertafeln. Leipzig und Dresden, 1789.

(Both were introduced in that one edit, together with books by Levitt, Standage, Willis, Windisch, and Der Schachautomat des Baron von Kempelen.)

Somehow the first later became: “Carl Friedrich Hindenburg, a university mathematician, kept a record of the conversations during the Turk’s time in Leipzig and published it in 1789 as Über den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen und dessen Nachbildung” — acquiring both the year of publication and the title details of Racknitz’s book.

The first item is available here (Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum Digitale Bibliothek, MDZ), and attributed by MDZ to Carl rather than Karl. (I don’t notice the author’s name in the book itself, but hardly spent any time looking. Fraktur gives me a headache.)

The second item is as described, here (Google Books). The author’s name appears at the foot of the page immediately preceding the Vorbericht.

Look in WorldCat for books titled Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen, and what one gets is a real mess. I suppose that the entries are created by librarians who are overworked and underpaid. — Hoary (talk) 07:22, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Something is suboptimal, shall we say, about:

Upon arrival in Paris in May, it was displayed to the public and played a variety of opponents, including a lawyer named Mr. Bernard who was a second rank in chess ability…. Moving to the Café de la Régence, the machine played many of the most skilled players, often losing (e.g. against Bernard and Verdoni)….

(My emphases.) — Hoary (talk) 09:21, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve just removed mention of the Poe story “Von Kempelen and His Discovery”. Its only relevance to the Turk seems to be “The family is connected, in some way, with Maelzel, of Automaton-chess-player memory”. Anyone doubting this is free to read the story (here). — Hoary (talk) 05:00, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Turk’s ability to speak was very limited indeed. Yet we read:

Sir Charles Wheatstone, an inventor, saw a later appearance of the Turk while it was owned by Mälzel. He also saw some of Mälzel’s speaking machines, and Mälzel later presented a demonstration of the speaking machines to the researcher and his teenage son. Alexander Graham Bell obtained a copy of a book by Wolfgang von Kempelen on speaking machines after being inspired by seeing a similar machine built by Wheatstone; Bell went on to file the first successful patent for the telephone.

I’m having great trouble finding a sound reference for the first sentence. I could just cut it: it would be easy to reference the remainder soundly. But this remainder, though interesting, would be related to the Turk only distantly. I don’t relish deletion of this chunk, but deletion might be the right thing to do. — Hoary (talk) 05:30, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Until a few minutes ago the article told the reader:

Charles Wheatstone, an inventor, saw a later appearance of the Turk while it was owned by Mälzel. He also saw some of Mälzel’s speaking machines, and Mälzel later demonstrated the speaking machines to Wheatstone and his teenage son. Alexander Graham Bell obtained a copy of a book by Wolfgang von Kempelen on speaking machines after being inspired by seeing a similar machine built by Wheatstone; Bell went on to file the first successful patent for the telephone.

— (virtually unchanged from what I quoted on 19 August), and attributed this to Ricky Jay’s “The Automaton Chess Player, the Invisible Girl, and the Telephone” (which I haven’t seen).

On pp 79–80 of his book The Turk, Standage describes how Kempelen’s book Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache… on speech synthesis prompted Wheatstone to make a copy of Kempelen’s device, and how Wheatstone’s demonstration of this influenced the young Alexander Graham Bell, which “ultimately led to Bell’s invention of the telephone in 1876”.

On p 78 of his Chess: Man vs Machine, Bradley Ewart says something similar, adding that the young A G Bell’s father borrowed for his son Wheatstone’s copy of Kempelen’s book, which A G Bell later recounted that he (AGB) “devoured”.

Neither Standage’s nor Ewart’s book mentions a role for the Turk in the development of the telephone. It seems likely that either Jay got the matter wrong or he was misunderstood/mis-summarized in the earlier editing of the article. I’ve therefore deleted this material. — Hoary (talk) 09:06, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article tells us that

In 1938, John Dickson Carr published The Crooked Hinge, among whose puzzles is an automaton that operates in a way that is unexplainable to the characters.

with a reference to a tiny Time piece that says nothing about any automaton and another reference to an unspecified page of a book by Joshi that I can’t find on the web.

This blog entry describes “the Golden Hag”, an automaton in John Dickson Carr’s The Crooked Hinge. The description does make it seem likely to me that it was influenced by the Turk, but it never says this — and anyway, it’s but a blog entry; and my guesswork is worth squat.

This blog entry describes The Crooked Hinge as “one of Carr’s misfires, a failure as a fair-play mystery”, and adds that “the business of the Golden Hag is one of those subplots whose main function seems to be to pad the story out to book length”. However, it’s but a blog entry.

If nobody can verify that page such-and-such of Joshi’s book (or of some other RS) says that the Golden Hag resembles the Mechanical Turk, I think that this mention of The Crooked Hinge should go. — Hoary (talk) 06:22, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Being cautious by nature and knowing your rigour, I would cut, frankly. Ceoil (talk) 01:38, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To add, always think the less the tighter and better with FA’s; if there is any doubt…remove. Ceoil (talk) 01:40, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil, when you wrote that, the article was 55,637 bytes long. Now it’s 72,872 bytes long: not obviously moving in the right direction. But I wouldn’t object to the removal(s) of Carr, Wolfe, and/or Macintyre. Meanwhile, I’m grateful that nobody has attached a list of “references” to the Turk made in pop songs, talk shows, etc. — Hoary (talk) 08:03, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil, in the short term, let’s leave this in. If we fail to find a RS for the resemblance, out it goes. If Joshi or another RS suggests that, no matter how clear the influence/resemblance, the “Golden Hag” is an unremarkable appendage to an unremarkable novel, out it goes. In the meantime, let’s be sure to leave a “citation needed” flag: it will then be easy to find and remove these unverifiable tidbits (or this unverifiable flab) in a hurry. — Hoary (talk) 04:56, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve removed mention of The Crooked Hinge. — Hoary (talk) 05:18, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wondering about the content and status of Living Dolls = Edison’s Eve (now “further reading”), I googled for it, failed to find it, but landed on Riskin, ed, Genesis Redux. That led me to a story by Jean Paul, which I’ve added to the article. (Perhaps the mention should be shortened.)

And that led me to “Baron von Kempelens Schach-„Automat“. Automaten und Androiden“, which might have a lot of material, for the energetic reader of German. — Hoary (talk) 08:49, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A description of the film Le Joueur d’échecs (The Chess Player, France 1927) was added in 2007; shortened by me on the second of this month; and removed by Ceoil on the 16th with the comment “rm ‘mentions’ or allusions”. That strikes me as an unduly harsh treatment of what appears (from the article about it) to have been a significant film, significantly derived from the Turk. I’ve therefore restored the paragraph about it, and added a second reference for the connection. (Hope you don’t mind, Ceoil!) — Hoary (talk) 08:25, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good call. Ceoil (talk) 09:43, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“5 July 1854, when a fire that started at the National Theater in Philadelphia reached the Museum and destroyed the Turk” is sourced to “pp. 97” (a plural singular page?) of Levitt 2000, a book I haven’t been able to find. This page shows that it’s also dealt with in chapter 4 of Andrew Heath, In Union There Is Strength: Philadelphia in the Age of Urban Consolidation (U Penn Press, 2019), which I’m also unable to read. (Yes, Jstor; but no access via TWL.) — Hoary (talk) 21:36, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This am currently reading up on; found bits and pieces last night but don’t have a clear view yet. Bear with me. Ceoil (talk) 01:43, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, Ceoil. — Hoary (talk) 04:58, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve just now made a sizable addition. I’m not so happy with its wording and I’m less happy about its titling. But awkward though it is, I’m confident that it’s an advance on suggesting that the first articles on the workings were published as late as 1834.

The newly added text conspicuously fails to link to Baltimore Gazette. If you read that (short) article you’ll understand why.

Ceoil (or anyone): Feel free to improve on my awkward addition. (And see the list of threads on this talk page, above.) — Hoary (talk) 23:32, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Will do later tonight. Very nice work overall 🙂 Ceoil (talk) 08:36, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, Ceoil. I don’t know when your night is, but anyway I’m unlikely to be editing this article for the next twenty hours or so. Incidentally I’ve come to greatly dislike this pair of sub-headers; please don’t hesitate to replace them with better alternatives. — Hoary (talk) 11:09, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The section title is not good, veering on awful. In other matters, I’m GMT, and a copy of the Benjamin book is on the Internet Archive here, though agree that it needs a more modern source also to back up the claim. Ceoil (talk) 21:31, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Alao think that the section header is reflective of an early 19th-century writing style that might indicate close paraphrasing of contemporary sources. Am working through this in most recent edits. Ceoil (talk) 00:06, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sources are missing:

Gene Wolfe’s 1977 science fiction short story “The Marvellous Brass Chessplaying Automaton”

• Added in 2007 by Tomgreeny (most recent edit 2011)
• Which RS says that it “features a device very similar to the Turk”?

Robert Löhr’s 2007 novel The Chess Machine (published in the UK as The Secrets of the Chess Machine)

• Added in 2016 by Biterolf (most recent edit 2023)
• Which RS says that it “focuses on the man inside the machine”?

F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre’s 2007 story “The Clockwork Horror”

• Added in 2008 by an IP.
• Which RS says that it “reconstructs Edgar Allan Poe’s encounter with Mälzel’s chess-player, and also establishes (from contemporary advertisements in a Richmond newspaper) precisely when and where this took place”?

— Hoary (talk) 07:59, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Löhr’s novel The Chess Machine: Yes, this claim is backed up by what’s written in the Washington Post review. — Hoary (talk) 04:30, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other sources on Lohr include:

• Morse, Karen Walton. “Lohr, Robert. The Chess Machine.” Library Journal, vol. 132, no. 8, 1 May 2007, pp. 72 Gale A163704499
• “The Chess Machine.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 254, no. 12, 19 Mar. 2007, p. 35. Gale A161076826
• “Lohr, Robert: THE CHESS MACHINE.” Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2007 Gale A169082309
• “Review: Books: Families: Confucius say: do snap out of it: DEBUT FICTION: This months debutantes offer heroines in Africa, London and Oxford and a very dodgy chess player.” Observer [London, England], 3 June 2007, p. 23. Gale A164441360

Umimmak (talk) 05:51, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good work, Umimmak! But let’s avoid the risk of being accused of “refbombing”. I guessed that the Observer piece would also be available (needing no registration, let alone payment) at theguardian.com, and yes it is. It explicitly describes the similarities with and the differences from the actual Turk; would you care to add it as a reference? (I didn’t look at any of the other linked sources; if you prefer one of them, then add that. But no more than one, please.)– Hoary (talk) 06:04, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Hoary: I came across Luca Crovi [it]‘s introduction “Il trucco c’è ma non si vede” to the 2021 BUR [it] Rizzoli Italian translation of Poe’s “Maelzel’s Chess Player”:

Ambrose Bierce nel 1899 si ispirò direttamente al saggio di Poe per costruire il suo racconto Moxon’s Master che mostra cosa succede al costruttore di un automa campione di scacchi quando sconfigge in una partita la sua creatura robotica, e questa, apparentemente priva di sentimenti, decide di ucciderlo brutalmente. Temi similari sono poi stati introdotti in un classico del mistero come The Crooked Hinge (1938) di John Dickson Carr, dove il dottor Gideon Fell risolve un enigma che lega al tema del Turco anche quello dei sopravvissuti al naufragio del Titanic. Mostrano invece terribili sviluppi fantascientifici del modello di partenza The Marvellous Brass Chess Playing Automaton (1977) di Gene Wolfe e The Secrets of the Chess Machine (2005) di Robert Loehr. Fergus Gwynplaine Macintyre in The Clockwork Horror (2006) è stato il primo scrittore a divertirsi a ricostruire in un racconto di fiction l’incontro storico fra Poe e il Turco.

However, even though this is a known author and publisher, perhaps he implicitly was referencing Wikipedia given the similarity to the Wikipedia article. I don’t think this is WP:CIRCULAR citation, stricto sensu; he is fixing things like the date for “Moxon’s Master” (the Wikipedia article incorrectly lists the date as 1909, when it appeared in his Collected Works; he fixes it to 1899 when it appeared in The San Francisco Examiner), and adding additional context not present in the Wikipedia article, so perhaps this was just scaffolding. Or perhaps these are just the only notable works of fiction on this topic so it’s natural he’d have the same ones presented in the same chronological order. Umimmak (talk) 05:27, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Umimmak, even back in September 2011 (and perhaps earlier, but I didn’t look), this article listed not only Poe and Bierce but also Carr, Wolfe, and Macintyre. I think it’s pretty clear that Crovi got it from Wikipedia (though perhaps via the article on the Turk in some other language). And as for the notion that “these are just the only notable works of fiction on this topic”, I realize that readers of Italian are likely to be much better informed about literature written in English than readers of English are about literature written in Italian … but would they be likely to have heard of Macintyre? Crovi may then have added tidbits to this, but taken as a whole it looks suspicious. I think we’d better not cite this by Crovi. ¶ You’re right about “Moxon’s Master”; do please fix the year for this. — Hoary (talk) 05:54, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that’s fair, I was hesitant to cite it but just wanted to flag it in case I was being overly cautious. Umimmak (talk) 06:24, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think about this re Wolfe: The eponymous machine of Gene Wolfe’s “The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton” (1977) suggests Wolfe’s homage to the real-world fraud debunked in Edgar Allan Poe’s essay “Maelzel’ s Chess-Player” (1836), but proves to be driven by psychic powers. from The Greenwood encyclopedia of science fiction and fantasy’s entry on Chess. And on Macintyre I also found this, not sure if this is enough though: F. Gwynplaine Macintyre’s “The Clockwork Horror” presents the events Poe wrote up for his essay “Malezel’s Chess Player” as keys to his morbid psychology. from the Evermore review in What do I read next? 2007, vol. 1, p. 232. Umimmak (talk) 06:21, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Umimmak, the comment in The Greenwood Encyclopedia on Wolfe is I think satisfactory: you could add it (and remove the “citation needed” flag). As for the short comment on Macintyre’s story, it alludes to the Turk only tangentially and I think it’s better skipped. — Hoary (talk) 07:17, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Added that cite, also fixed the Bierce date as above. Didn’t do The Observer, I don’t have strong feelings on if we need anything more than WaPo but just in case they were useful I figured I’d include them here. Umimmak (talk) 07:37, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Until a few minutes ago, the lead told the reader:

[After the destruction in 1854 of the mechanical Turk], articles were published by a son of the machine’s owner revealing its secrets to the public: that it was an elaborate hoax, suspected by some, but never proven in public while it still existed.

(My emphasis.) This cites a 1999 paper, which I haven’t been able to read, by Simon Schaffer.

The article goes on to point out that in 1827 the Baltimore Gazette had told its readers:

This ingenious contrivance . . . has at length been discovered by accident to be merely the case in which a human agent has always been concealed, when exhibited to an audience.

A major point of George Allen’s 1859 paper-in-the-form-of-a-letter and James Cook’s 1995 paper is the reluctance to abandon the belief that the Turk was an automaton. Evidence of human operation was summarily dismissed.

And therefore I’ve replaced what was in the lead with

. . . , articles were published by a son of the machine’s owner revealing its secrets to the public: that it was an elaborate hoax, suspected by some, but never widely accepted as proven while it still existed.

Schaffer probably didn’t write this and I therefore removed the reference. (For possible use in the future, it’s: Schaffer, Simon (1999). “Enlightened Automata”. In Clark, William; Golinski, Jan; Schaffer, Simon (eds.). The Sciences in Enlightened Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-10939-8.) — Hoary (talk) 22:28, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m hesitant to link directly because of WP:COPYVIO as I’m unsure of the online provenance of this file, but one can easily find a PDF of that chapter online (Schaffer_Simon_1999_Enlightened_Automata.pdf) on Monoskop in case it helps. Umimmak (talk) 08:30, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting website, Umimmak! But I have the same qualms about this PDF that you have. Thank you, all the same. — Hoary (talk) 10:39, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I wouldn’t think to link it as part of a citation, but as a PDF scan just happens to already exist on the web it’d be useful for you or other editors if one wanted to see the nine pages of that chapter which discuss the Turk. Umimmak (talk) 17:05, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody — I’d guess Bdj, but I haven’t investigated — has meticulously attributed “The Last of a Veteran Chess Player”, published across two issues of The Chess Monthly, to “S[ilas] W[eir] Mitchell” (that editor’s brackets, or another editor’s; anyway, not mine). But I can’t find any mention of authorship within either issue of the magazine. Am I missing something? — Hoary (talk) 22:59, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not Hoary. I’m still in the prose clarity phase, but I’m enjoying your corrections and to say any fixes you make on my edits will be welcome and apreciated. As said on my talk have found inexpensive copies of Levitt and and now Standage’s books…but they are by post so will be a better help on fact-checking in around two weeks. Hold on!Ceoil (talk) 01:34, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m enjoying yours too, Ceoil. Well, one in twenty, I think “Nah”; one in five, I think “Hey, whichever”; but three quarters are definitely improvements (and of course I may be wrong about the quarter). So do please keep going. I’m looking forward to finding what those two books actually say. Meanwhile, “S[ilas] W[eir] Mitchell” seems to have been added by Umimmak. — Hoary (talk) 01:50, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Hoary: yeah this was me, the Index of authors for that volume (pp. iv-v) lists “Mitchell, S. W.–Articles..3,40” hdl:2027/hvd.hn43vw. Umimmak (talk) 18:54, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thinks: How the hell could I have missed an index of authors? So I looked at the source (Google Books). Well, it has handwritten, intermittently legible indexes of this and that (most intriguingly, of “enigmas”), but I hope I’ll be excused for not having digested them. (They certainly would have defeated any effort at OCR.) Then I clicked on the hdl link; and it’s just as you describe it, Umimmak. So far, nothing remarkable: One reproduction simply includes a few pages that the other lacks. But now the oddity: the hdl (Hathitrust) one too says “Digitized by Google”. Still, if Google is digitizing trillions* of pages, no big surprise if a few billion* among them are duplicated. ¶ Umimmak, Mechanical Turk is an article on a fascinating subject (tho’ admittedly one of minor significance). The fascination may have rather blinded Ceoil and me to the article’s many weaknesses, but we’re now aware of several and hope to have an improved version of this article survive a “Featured Article” review. Any other help you could provide would be welcome! — Hoary (talk) 21:40, 24 August 2025 (UTC) * Accuracy of these figures is not guaranteed.[reply]

One time every 24 hours:) Anyway, not thrilled with the recurring phrase “illusion” and wondering if “fraud” is better. I still don’t think the opening sentences of the lead properly or clearly explain the what and how by which they were all taken in; can you take a look so we can tease it out. Ceoil (talk) 03:20, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil, “illusion” is probably overused; but I’m not happy about “fraud(ulent)”. Rather than defrauding (or attempting to defraud) the paying audience (and paying players), I’d say it was hoodwinking them (or attempting to do so). Show business, innit! (Though I’d be open to an argument that “fraud” and “fraudulent” no longer correspond so neatly to “defraud”.) — Hoary (talk) 05:08, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Although old-timey myself at this stage, am seeing 19th c. phrases and sentence here and there still in the text that we should maybe excise. Lol re “hoodwinked” – trickery, rascals 🙂 but take your point – dupe, mislead and take in are other phrases we might use. The more I read the more fascinating the subject is! Ceoil (talk) 07:39, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I dunno, Ceoil — is there something wrong with 19th-century “lexical items”, if these are a good fit, semantically? Though no, one shouldn’t go overboard: I’m not suggesting The Mechanical Turk … was a hornswoggling chess-playing machine constructed in 1770…. I’m happy with 21st-century phrasing too; but I do get very tired of some items that are endlessly repeated. (E.g. in my English it’s perfectly fine to say that the fish ‘n’ chip shop is on the high street; but in current en:WP-speak it seems that one must instead say that it’s located on the high street. Three more syllables; no change in meaning.) — Hoary (talk) 10:38, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

grand Hoary, wont bring it up again. As have said before, I really admire your wording and turns of phrase – goddam you but when I was lurking back in ealy 2006 you were one of the reasons I decided to commit to the bloody project (I also blame MONGO, Sandy, Tony1, Giano, FiliochT, SV and George. Confound them all! Ceoil (talk) 10:47, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just curious… — Hoary (talk) 10:53, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• “Other automata were adopted” (quoting Walker)
• “Music-playing women automata” (from the subtitle of a cited paper by Voskuh)
• “other purported chess-playing automatons” (in Wikipedia’s voice)
• “Chess automatons” (category that this article is in)

But “automatons” sounds rather odd to me, and here is Google Ngram Viewer on this minor matter. — Hoary (talk) 06:19, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Struck me also, and notice that Britannica also uses the term in their article, the cads. For our purposes, think that automaton = machine or computing device. Ceoil (talk) 07:44, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil, I think our use of the word [whose singular form is] automaton is fine. But it has two plural forms: automatons, automata. We shouldn’t fiddle with what others say; but in Wikipedia’s voice, should it be, say, “other purported chess-playing automatons”, or, say, “other purported chess-playing automata”? (I prefer the latter.) — Hoary (talk) 10:47, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok Ceoil (talk) 10:52, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Via Levitt (I think), the article briefly describes a history of descriptions and misdescriptions of the Turk that might be called “nonfiction”:

• “In 1859, a letter published in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch by William F. Kummer” some details found (from Ewart), but they’re inadequate; [NIA]
• “Later [in 1859] an uncredited article appeared in Littell’s Living Age that purported to be the story of the Turk from French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.” some details found (from Ewart), but they look sketchy; [NIA]
• “[in 1899] The American Chess Magazine published an account of the Turk’s match with Napoleon. The story was basically a review of previous accounts” (Incidentally, the context suggests to me that “review” should instead be the slightly pejorative “rehash”, though I’d like to know what Levitt says.) some details found (from Ewart), but they look inadequate; [NIA]
• “[in 1947,] Chess Review published articles by Kenneth Harkness and Jack Straley Battell that amounted to a comprehensive history and description of the Turk” details found, but [NIA]
• “article written in 1960 for American Heritage by Ernest Wittenberg” Found
• “Henry A. Davidson’s 1945 publication A Short History of Chess” [NIA]
• “Alex G. Bell’s 1978 book The Machine Plays Chess” [NIA]
• “Charles Michael Carroll’s The Great Chess Automaton (1975)” [NIA]
• “Bradley Ewart’s Chess: Man vs. Machine (1980)” Found

What’s written in the article is pretty good as it is, and shouldn’t be significantly bulked up. But links to scans at the Internet Archive would be welcome…. — Hoary (talk) 07:25, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[NIA] = seemingly Not at the Internet Archive. — Hoary (talk) 10:58, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I should have asked earlier . . . but better late than never.

References such as

• Standage 2002, pp. 40–42.
• Standage 2002, pp. 44–45.
• Standage 2002, p. 49.

obviously benefit from Template:Sfn (or similar: Sfnp, etc): this reduces bulk.

References such as

• Ashenhurst 1879, pp. 46–47.
• Jean Paul 1927.
• Charles 2007.

do not. Each of these sources is cited just once (and it’s most unlikely that any will be cited a second time). The only advantage of Template:Sfn (or similar) is visual consistency.

Should we have Charles 2007., pointing to Charles, Ron (30 June 2007). “Checkmate”. Washington Post. (as we do now, of course); or should we instead simply have Charles, Ron (30 June 2007). “Checkmate”. Washington Post. (as we do for some other references, e.g. Jiménez, Juan Ramón. “The Rook Endgame Machine of Torres y Quevedo”. ChessBase, 20 July 2004. Accessed 15 January 2006)?

I don’t know or much mind, but I’d hate to work on making it consistent in one of these two ways, later to be told that no, it must go in the other direction. So I decided to look at what’s done in articles recently promoted to FA. I took what are currently the top five entries in WP:FAC/Featured log/August 2025. The first, Georg Karo hasn’t yet been promoted. As for the other four, they are (as reordered by me):

• Trichogenes claviger (a critically endangered fish), whose 18 references are all complete in themselves (there’s no pointing to items in a separate section titled “Sources” or similar). Let’s call this referencing style (A).
• Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79 (about a Bach cantata, of course). Its 19 references each point to an item of the section “Cited sources”; the 19 include some that are only used once. Let’s call this referencing style (B).
• Rosa Parks (famed in the US civil rights struggle), whose 225 references are of two kinds: many point to items in the section “sources”, but many that point to sources only used once are given in full. Let’s call this referencing style (A+B).
• Dragostea din tei (about a Moldavan pop song). A quick look suggests that none of the 383 references is complete in itself; instead, each consists of one or more links to what are specified in the section titled “Sources”. Let’s call this referencing style (Bᵦ).

For Mechanical Turk, (A) would be unwieldy, requiring plentiful use of Template:Rp (seemingly not popular among other editors these days); conversion to it would be a horrible chore. (Bᵦ) would save a little bulk, but I think not enough for conversion to it to be worth the effort. So let’s forget (A) and (Bᵦ).

Which is preferable, (A+B) or (B)? (As long as the conversion is to one of these two styles, I’ll undertake to do the conversion myself.) — Hoary (talk) 00:08, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody commented, and therefore I’ll go with (B) — except for references for which one can’t specify author(s): I’ll use <ref>...</ref> for the latter. — Hoary (talk) 10:23, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Serendipodous, back in 2008 you wondered: “Is it notable that The Turk was used to represent the computer Deep Blue in the documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine?”

It could be, if a reliable source has written something interesting about the matter. (I haven’t searched.) Would you care to look? — Hoary (talk) 04:37, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does Levitt (pp. 151–152) really say that after 1859, “A new article about the Turk did not turn up until 1899”? That seemed most implausible when I first read it (in this article), and I’m not surprised to find (via Bradley Ewart’s bibliography and some rather tiresome Googling) that it’s not correct. “The automaton chess-player“, pp. 84–92 of Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts (1860, so only a trivial exception); “The automaton chess player”. Cornhill Magazine. September 1885. pp. 299–306 – via Internet Archive.. And I suspect that there are more.

NB there are numerous other hits for “chess automaton” or similar in material published between 1860 and 1898; but most are concerned with “Ajib” or “Mephisto”. And disappointingly, “The rival automata: A tale of two Turks”, pages 94–95, 105–108 of Columbia Chess Chronicle, vol 4 (1889) is mere fiction.

But perhaps Levitt says something rather different. — Hoary (talk) 23:19, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil, here’s another minor mystery that your copy of Levitt’s book might clarify. — Hoary (talk) 06:44, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m puzzled by

Underneath the robes of the Ottoman model, two other doors were hidden. These also exposed clockwork machinery and provided a similarly unobstructed view through the machine. The design allowed the presenter of the machine to open every available door to the public, to maintain the illusion.

What was hidden about them; and whatever it was, why hide? (Or am I just sleepy?) Ceoil, when you get your copy of Standage’s book, maybe you can check just what he says. — Hoary (talk) 01:50, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hoary, got knocked back from the seller during the week as they did not in fact have the book in stock. Which is kind of rude. Foud another seller…expected date now Fri, Sept 19. Ceoil (talk) 23:44, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Ceoil, I should have said earlier: A few days ago, I got a copy of Standage’s book. Indeed, I’ve already looked up some matters within it, and edited accordingly. What I haven’t yet found time to do is read the book cover to cover. Doing so shouldn’t take particularly long, as it’s a very readable book. — Hoary (talk) 09:20, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The inconsistency of US/UK spelling (and wording) is not foremost among the remaining problems of this article. But — of course ignoring quoted material — the combination of

• British: “Two brass discs”, “rotated the discs”, “a traveller”, “travelled to Leipzig”, “his travelling show”, “15 centimetres”
• American: “alternate versions”, “was a skeptic”
• American or Oxford: “synthesized information”

might not go down well. The mechanical Turk toured Britain and the US. (It spent more time, and met its death, in the latter.) Its two showmen were Hungarian and German; they used English where appropriate but I get the hazy impression that their primary lingua franca would have been French. If it’s an issue, the article uses DMY date order.

Non-Oxford British English (“synthesised”, etc) seems pointless to me. Which to use: Oxford (British) spelling, or US spelling? (TenPoundHammer?) — Hoary (talk) 08:25, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No preference. Ceoil (talk) 20:49, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll wait a few more days, Ceoil; and then, if there’ve been no objections, shall standardize on “Oxford”. (Of course American spelling too would be fine with me, but somebody might argue that American spelling implies American standards, and that these dictate not DMY but MDY, and I have no desire to convert a pile of dates.) — Hoary (talk) 21:55, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed as “Oxford”. — Hoary (talk) 21:04, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Umimmak, you’ve added Sheryl Hamilton’s “Invented Humans: Kinship and Property in Persons” to “Further reading”. “Invented humans” is chapter 4 of Hamilton’s Impersonations, different pages of which (I mean, outside chapter 4) the article already cites (three times). You’ve given the book a different ISBN (but one that appears to be valid), and a different year of publication. (My guess is that this is an “eISBN” for a slightly later publication of the PDF.) And you’ve given it a DOI that doesn’t seem to be valid. It’s odd to cite a book and list it for “Further reading”. If chapter 4 has material that you think is worthwhile here, you’re free to summarize it, add it, and cite it in the normal way. — Hoary (talk) 21:58, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m about to remove this from “Further reading”. — Hoary (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that’s fine, sorry! I didn’t realize it was already cited and just in general want to make sure reliable sources that might benefit the reader or future editors don’t get completely lost from the article. Umimmak (talk) 23:04, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article currently cites this source, which says of the first genuine chess automaton:

The machine, dubbed El Ajedrecista (Spanish for “the chessplayer”), was built in 1912 and made its public debut during the Paris World Fair of 1914, creating great excitement at the time.

What is meant by “Paris World Fair of 1914”? There’s no mention of this in either fr:Liste des Expositions universelles or fr:Expositions universelles de Paris, which surely wouldn’t omit such an expo. (There was an Exposition internationale urbaine de Lyon, but Lyon isn’t Paris and the theme of the expo doesn’t seem relevant.) — Hoary (talk) 22:30, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m about to remove this from the article. Guess: if it wasn’t a fantasy of Ramón Jiménez (author of the cited source), it was a fantasy of some source that he depended on. The 1915 article in Scientific American says that “The Paris University invited M. Torres to make an exhibition of several of his most interesting devices” (my emphasis); perhaps “university” and universelle somehow got confused. — Hoary (talk) 23:31, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added a note: “Although Jiménez states that El Ajedrecista appeared ‘during the Paris World Fair of 1914’, no such world’s fair took place.” — Hoary (talk) 23:22, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with the removal. Ceoil (talk) 23:07, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actual automata are of hugely more significance than are pseudo-automata . . . but does El Ajedrecista really belong to the “legacy” of the Turk? — Hoary (talk) 22:08, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I haven’t been able to see either Reininger’s or Sharples’ book. The former was much used by Kirby Krackle for the article on Kempelen.) But I imagine that they could be useful. If you are lucky enough to have access to a good reference library, take a look. — Hoary (talk) 07:50, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve rather reluctantly removed] a two-part tale by James Randi from “External links”. The second part tells its readers:

• “[T]here was room for the concealed occupant to then insert his head and shoulders up into the lower part of the figure. There, perhaps through slits or some sort of see-through fabric, he would be able to view the chess board.”
• Kempelen “actually sold his invention to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia!”
• “the King of Bavaria, Eugene Beauharnois”

I believe that each of these three misstates or misimplies. (There may be more where these come from: I haven’t read very carefully.) Also, Randi uses “operator” not to mean the person moving chess pieces around but rather the showman (normally Kempelen or Mälzel): there’s nothing wrong with this, but it might well confuse the reader of the WP article. — Hoary (talk) 07:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some small things,

• Borger (2018) is unused, although he is mentioned in the last footnote “Although Borger, Furniss and Hamilton…” + in that footnote, the Bibliothèque nationale de France source should be inline, strictly speaking
• Refs 162 (Bierce 1910) and 164 (Wolfe 1977) are throwing up Harv errors, although I can’t see why. Ceoil (talk) 19:57, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil, the former: Good catches; both now fixed. The latter: I see no error messages (applying to what are now 163 and 165). Where/how do you see them? — Hoary (talk) 00:06, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, Borger and Bierce are still throwing up bolded red errors on my screen. Maybe its a temp template error? Ceoil (talk) 00:11, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A temp template error seems likely – i deleted the refs in a test save, and the sources were still showing that they were reffed. On that basis I am now full in keep mode. It was a pleasure to see you work my friend. Ceoil (talk) 00:17, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What was:

The young Robert Willis (later a renowned mechanical engineer and architectural historian) carefully observed Mälzel’s exhibitions of the Turk

is now:

The mechanical engineer and architectural historian Robert Willis carefully observed Mälzel’s exhibitions of the Turk

Ceoil (or anyone), the latter suggests to me that the observation was that of a mechanical engineer cum architectural historian. But Willis published it (as An Attempt to Analyse the Automaton Chess Player of Mr. de Kempelen) in 1821. He was born in 1800. It wasn’t till 1822 that he started towards his first degree. So, er, (cough)…. — Hoary (talk) 00:19, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t mind, but it seemed like an extraneous detail when trimming. Is it important to mention because as a young man he might have been naive and more easily duped? Ceoil (talk) 00:24, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that’s a legitimate tentative influence, I suppose. Though I was thinking more along the lines of “Some of the brightest people of the time, and the best-qualified to make inferences about an automaton, were very intrigued by this. As an example, this eminent fellow, in a remarkably precocious publication.” — Hoary (talk) 01:08, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Though “best-qualified” (above) was hardly the best-chosen word for the purpose. The “best-equipped”, perhaps. (Though these days it seems that one’s expected to write “most well-equipped/chosen/qualified/known”, etc, which seem(s) ungainly to me.) — Hoary (talk) 01:59, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion: Revert, minus “renowned”. — Hoary (talk) 00:22, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Or whatever….my edits to other’s articles as always welcome to be reverted. Do as you see fit Hoary 🙂 Ceoil (talk) 00:27, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shall do! — Hoary (talk) 01:08, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bless you for forgiving my ways 🙂 Ceoil (talk) 01:14, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve never seen such a thing for any other article. Feel free to ridicule it as the height of pretentiousness and pomposity. But I’ve found it useful.

But of course I don’t “own” this article. Above is a list of choices made till now; perhaps some should be changed in the future. — Hoary (talk) 07:53, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Our beloved MoS mandates unspaced ellipses. — Hoary (talk) 22:10, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A single person’s single surname was and still is commonly written either ⟨Mälzel⟩ or ⟨Maelzel⟩. When this article talks of someone having been “fairly and kindly treated by Maelzel”, it’s quoting Allen, who writes ⟨Maelzel⟩. I’m therefore about to revert Kneesalt‘s well-intentioned edit. — Hoary (talk) 23:41, 20 October 2025 (UTC) [Typo fixed. — Hoary (talk) 22:01, 3 December 2025 (UTC)][reply]

1. Levitt 2000, p. 40. — verified “Maelzel had changed some of the routines that von Kemptelen had used….such as discarding the box”.
2. Levitt 2000, p. 26. — verified. “Philidor’s son Andrew, who witnessed the match, later recalled that his father had considered this the most fatiguing game of chess ever. Trying to throw a game while making it appear a natural loss can be most difficult”.
3. Levitt 2000, pp. 37–38. — verified. “The Turk rested this time for almost twenty silent years. On March 26, 1804, the great Barron von Kempelen died at the age of 70.”
4. Levitt 2000, p. 30. — verified
5. Levitt 2000, p. 45. — verified
6. Levitt 2000, p. 87 — verified
7. Levitt 2000, pp. 87–91. — verified
8. Levitt 2000, pp. 97. — verified. “The 86-year-old mystifier, the international ambassador of wonder and amazement, had gone up in smoke.”
9. Levitt 2000, pp. 31–32. — verified. “Cartwright….was very impressed by what he saw…[long quote from Cartwright]]. The Reverent …began working on this observation and soon had a prototype loom. The invention he patented in 1785…was still crude…so he continued working”. Ceoil (talk) 20:16, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hoary likes this.

Ceoil and I are having a little pre-edit war about whether the lead image should feature a more accurate visual on the Mechanical Turk based on current data or a less-accurate/conjectural image created by guessers in the relevant historical time-period. Any thoughts from the community? Wolfdog (talk) 18:27, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wolfdog, for the record, no hard feelings, but as the article is on the main page, wanted to retain the longstanding image, rather than the new and somewhat ugly “faithful” pic, but let’s see what others say. Not a matter I would go to the mattresses about, so best. Ceoil (talk) 18:31, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Same here, to a degree. Thanks for the collegiality. Wolfdog (talk) 18:32, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No problems, from your edit history you seem to know more about this area than me. To reiterate my review rational – “the article is mostly about the deception rather than the actual “machine”. Thus, the satirical image is more appropriate”. But again, open to discussion. Ceoil (talk) 18:34, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

a chess-playing computer named “the turk” is a significant plot device in a tv series linked with the “the terminator” franchise:

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

how best to add this in to the article?

duncanrmi (talk) 19:50, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose, Duncanrmi, by briefly describing it in an additional sentence appended to the paragraph starting “A film inspired by the Turk” (currently the last paragraph of Mechanical Turk#In_literature_and_the_arts). — Hoary (talk) 23:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll C&P that in, then. presumably wp won’t mind being refrred to one of its own pages by way of a citation, since the evidence is all properly presented there?

duncanrmi (talk) 23:53, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yours, duncanrmi; and as trimmed by me. I hope that this seems OK. — Hoary (talk) 07:09, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

absolutely fine, cheers!

duncanrmi (talk) 21:42, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DrKay, or anyone: “Jean Paul” was the pseudonym of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter. The Wikipedia article on him consistently refers to him as “Jean Paul”, not as plain “Paul”; even though it refers to “Goethe”, “Schiller”, “Herder”, “Wieland”, etc. “Jean Paul” is often used within the string “Jean Paul Fried(e)rich Richter” (e.g. in this paper), so I doubt that those familiar with the man’s work often treat “Paul” (analogously to Clemens’ “Twain”) as a surname. — Hoary (talk) 00:05, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Hoary and Ceoil: Hoary mentioned the article at the Help desk yesterday, so I had a look and the paragraph about the Philadelphia (or Chinese) Museum from 1840 to 1854 rang a bell as I wrote Peale’s Philadelphia Museum last year. The paragraph is sourced to Levitt 2000, Standage 2002, and Mitchell 1857, with the first two quoting extensively from the last. My article is thin on detail for that period, so I looked at Google books and it seems that the Museum sold the Chinese Museum building in 1843 and Edmund Peale bought the collection and moved it into an ex-Masonic hall in Chestnut Street in 1845. The collection [minus the paintings] was resold to Barnum in 1849 and dispersed.^[1] It therefore seems unlikely that the Turk remained in the Chinese Museum building until 1854 to be consumed in the fire. Mitchell’s account reads like a parody of a Victorian narrative and I don’t think it was supposed to be taken literally. Are there any other secondary sources for this episode? I couldn’t see any previous discussion of this on this page.

TSventon (talk) 03:51, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TSventon, thank you for bringing this up. Other secondary sources? Here’s what I could rustle up. Or tried to but couldn’t. They’re in chronological order.

• Allen 1859, page 483. I think that the account is compatible with Mitchell’s, though I haven’t read closely. But note that Allen writes: Of the countless visitors of the Chinese Museum few ever inquired for, few ever saw, the forgotten Automaton. I do not remember ever to have heard of its being where it was, until I heard of its destruction. And: the city newspapers […] had not a word to give to the annihilation of a piece of mechanism historically more curious than any other the world has ever seen. So it’s possible that he’s basing his account on the word of Mitchell alone … and that Mitchell was wrong.
• Henry Ridgely Evans. “The romance of automata”. The Open Court. Issue 3 (1905), pages 131–140. Page 135: Finally it was deposited in the Chinese Museum, where it remained for fourteen years, with the dust accumulating upon it. Here the Chess Player rested from his labors, a superannuated, broken down pensioner, dreaming, if automatons can dream, of his past adventures, until the year 1854. On July 5 of that year a great fire destroyed the Museum, and the Turbaned Turk was burnt to ashes. Better such a fate than rotting to pieces in the cellar of some old warehouse, forgotten and abandoned.
• Harkness, Kenneth; Battell, Jack Straley (February–November 1947). “This made chess history”. Chess Review. Not seen; perhaps says something.
• Arrington 1960, page 87. The Turk was finally deposited in the Chinese Museum, where the Charles Willson Peale and Nathan Dunn collections were housed. Citing “Fiske, 476–484”; i.e. Allen 1859, 476–484.
• Wittenberg 1960: the Turk soon lost his novelty and was presented to the Chinese Museum in Philadelphia, where he played chess several times and was then relegated to an upstairs corner. On July 5, 1854, fire broke out in a nearby theater and enveloped the museum. Crews marched in and out of the building for several hours saving the museum’s treasures, but no one remembered the ancient Turk, and he perished by flame at the age of eighty-five (unreferenced)
• Charles Michael Carroll. The Great Chess Automaton (1975). Not seen; perhaps says something.
• Bell, Alex G. The Machine Plays Chess? (1978). Not seen; perhaps says something.
• Ewart 1980, page 122. Based on Mitchell and Allen.
• Stephen P. Rice, “Making Way for the Machine: Maelzel’s Automaton Chess-Player and Antebellum American Culture” (1994) (JSTOR 25081081). Not seen; perhaps says something.
• Cook 1995, pages 256–257: Ironically, the automaton itself perished just as this new urban landscape was taking shape in the United States – a helpless victim of the 1854 fire in Philadelphia that destroyed the final remnant of the Peale Museum (then known as the Chinese Museum) along with most of its curious contents. Before the fire, the automaton had maintained a quiet semi-retirement in one of the museum’s back rooms, shown from time to time by Mitchell to chess-playing friends, to his students at Jefferson Medical College, or to an occasional visitor who still desired to see the eighty-year-old, transatlantic legend in action.
• Sharples, John. A Cultural History of Chess Players: Minds, Machines and Monsters (2017). Not seen; perhaps says something.
• Heath, Andrew. “‘To Give Shape to the Destinies of Our City’: Molding the Metropolis”, chapter 4 (JSTOR j.ctv16t6hgz.8) of Heath’s In Union There Is Strength: Philadelphia in the Age of Urban Consolidation (2019). Not seen; probably says something.

— Hoary (talk) 08:38, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Hoary and Ceoil: I am fairly new to this subject, but my initial feeling is that we should

• attribute the account of what happened after 1840 to Silas Mitchell as Levitt 2000 and Standage 2002 use his account (that would be relatively straightforward)
• add a footnote saying what other sources say (that will need some more work)

Do either of you have access to Levitt 2000 and Standage 2002? I can see pages 190 and 191 of Standage 2002 at https://archive.org/details/turklifetimesoff00stan by searching for “Chinese” and snippets of pages 95 and 97 of Standage 2002 via Google books. The index for Standage 2002 lists pages 95-97 , 96 , 237-38 under Chinese Museum, but 96 seems to be missing from the Google books version. They may be the best sources as they are 21st century book length sources. The timing of those books is interesting as research was more difficult in the early days of the internet. Wikipedia started in 2001, C W Peale’s article was started in 2003 and I wrote the Philadelphia Museum article in 2024; Google books started in 2004.

I have reread pages 3 and 4 of Mitchell 1857 as linked in the article and I don’t think the account of the fire should be taken literally. For what it is worth, Mitchell claims to have entered the building during the fire, but not the floor where the Turk was kept. TSventon (talk) 16:10, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TSventon, I have Standage’s book, and a few minutes ago sent you email related to this. I don’t have Levitt’s book. Ceoil does have Levitt’s book (or anyway did as recently as 29 November). — Hoary (talk) 22:22, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Levitt p. 97 only quotes Mitchell (starting from…”It was in Philadelphia on the night of the 5th July 1854″ through to “echec! echec!”. He does conclude (the section and chapter) with his own “The eighty-five year old mystifier, the international embassador of wonder and amazement, had gone up to smoke”. Ceoil (talk) 23:25, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ps Hoary, will email the page to you shortly. Ceoil (talk) 23:29, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Got it, Ceoil. (And then got it again.) Thank you. Now waiting to hear from TSventon…. Hoary (talk) 08:18, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]